Santa Clara University

Leaders on Guam

Santa Clara Law alumni serve this territory as judges, senators, and attorney generals.

By Susan Vogel

In the Guam legal community, every day is an Santa Clara alumni event. Santa Clara Law has graduated more Guam attorneys than any other law school. “We see each other day in and day out in our work,” says Elizabeth Barrett-Anderson ’79, a judge on the Guam Superior Court. “We share stories of our times at SCU. Some of the stories have lived on for decades among alumni and faculty at SCU.”

“The law without morality is dangerous. We cannot separate who we are from what we do, and I am always reminded that despite my ability to do certain things as an attorney, I must remember who I am, where I came from, and what I believe in. SCU not only provided an excellent law school education, but reminded me that Catholicism must be considered in how I practice law.”

—DOUGLAS MOYLAN ’91

Guam, an unincorporated U.S. territory 1,500 miles east of the Philippines and the largest island in the Marianas island chain, is the home of at least a dozen SCU law alumni. Only 212 square miles (about half the size of San Mateo County) with a population of 154,000, Guam has only 275 active lawyers, and that includes many SCU alumni, who have become leaders in the territory including judges, attorneys general, and senators.

Guam has an elected governor, an elected representative to the U.S. Congress, and a unicameral legislature. It has trial and supreme courts, but no intermediate appellate court. Its federal district court is part of the 9th Circuit. Guam’s codified laws are based on the 1939 California Code (thanks to an early U.S. Navy government that used California law) modified by Guam’s legislature to meet local needs and to reflect the island’s matriarchal and Catholic traditions.

Guam’s history has resulted in a very ethnically diverse population. Prior to the arrival of Europeans, it was populated entirely by the Chamorro, a matriarchal people who currently make up 43 percent of the island’s population. The remaining ethnicities (23 percent Filipino, 15 percent other ethnic groups, 14 percent Caucasian, and 5 percent other Pacific Islander) reflect the island’s history since the arrival of Fernando Magellan in 1521. The Jesuits arrived in 1568, establishing Catholicism and making Guam an important trade route between Nueva Espana (Mexico) and the Spanish Philippines. In 1898, Spain ceded the island to the U.S. following the Spanish American War, ending 333 years of Spanish rule.

On December 10, 1941, three days after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Guam surrendered to Japanese forces after a bloody battle. Japan occupied Guam until July 21, 1944 when American forces landed and after three weeks of battle, reestablished American rule. The U.S. then used Guam as a Pacific Theater command post until the conclusion of W.W.II.

In 1949, President Truman established Guam as an unincorporated territory and made Guam citizens U.S. citizens. Guam remained a security site however, until 1967, when it was opened to tourism, now the territory’s main industry.

DOUGLAS MOYLAN ’91

Douglas Moylan says his grandfather instilled in him a deep mistrust of government. So when Moylan had the opportunity to join the government, he did.

Francis “Scotty” L. Moylan, now nearly 90 years old, was an Irish-Scottish Catholic immigrant in Chicago when the Great Depression broke up his family and took everything he owned except his work ethic, his determination, and his principles. A professional boxer, he made his way to Hawaii, where he rebuilt his life and married a woman of Hawaiian and Chinese descent. Eventually they moved to Guam, where they established several business.

“My grandfather would tell me about how, when they were working on a construction project, they carried pistols to keep the government people from demanding bribes,” Douglas Moylan recalls.

Douglas Moylan was born in Stockton, Calif., where his mother, a Chamorro/Spanish native of Guam, and his father were living while his father attended pharmacy school at University of the Pacific. His family returned to Guam when Moylan was two years old and he attended Catholic schools in Guam before returning to the U.S. to enroll in University of Notre Dame and then SCU, which he says he chose because of its Jesuit nature and its “strong history of defending the faith and training its students with a disciplined regimen of study,” he says.

After graduating, Moylan worked for Guam’s superior court, first as a law clerk to the presiding judge and then as a staff attorney. He subsequently joined a private practice, where he engaged in general law and acted as legislative counsel to three two-term sessions of the territory’s legislature.

Moylan’s work for the legislature confirmed his grandfather’s admonitions. “I saw firsthand what I perceived as corruption and injustice in government. I saw the diversion of resources to politically powerful groups. I concluded that Guam needed to have a crime fighter to protect the public interest. So when Guam’s law changed to allow for an elected attorney general—an attorney for the people of Guam—I decided to run.”

Politics in Guam is considered the island’s “greatest spectator sport,” says Moylan. “The island is populated by clans—large families whose members take care of each other both socially and politically.” Moylan’s race for office, against three other candidates, was “nasty, personal, and hotly contested,” he says.

His tenure as attorney general has been as controversial as his race. He took office in 2003 with a promise to the citizens of Guam to engage in a government housecleaning. His office has indicted 50 government employees, 19 of whom have been convicted. Since the AG does all the legal work of the government, including prosecuting criminal and civil cases at the trial level (district attorneys don’t exist), there are 5,000 active cases, and “you live in a fishbowl,” says Moylan.

Throughout his work, his Santa Clara Law education has provided a solid intellectual and moral base. “The law without morality is dangerous. We cannot separate who we are from what we do, and I am always reminded that despite my ability to do certain things as an attorney, I must remember who I am, where I came from, and what I believe in. SCU not only provided an excellent law school education, but reminded me that Catholicism must be considered in how I practice law.”

Moylan is vilified by his opponents and constantly in the spotlight, a challenge for someone who says he was an introvert in his younger years. What keeps him going? His family (which includes two sons and a daughter, and his fiancee, Trisia), the fact that the people of Guam have placed their trust in him, and the legacy of his grandfather. “He taught me the principles of never giving up and never selling out,” says Moylan. An image Moylan used in his 2002 campaign was a briefcase containing a pair of boxing gloves. The image was not only an homage to his grandfather, but an accurate symbol of the challenges to come.

BENJAMIN J. CRUZ ’75

“I have wanted to be a lawyer since I was a little boy. I used to skip piano lessons to run across the street to watch the court and the legislature in session.”

—BENJAMIN CRUZ ’75

Guam, says Benjamin J. Cruz ’75, “is a place where I can be myself.” That means, according to Cruz, being flamboyant and outrageous.

Benjamin Cruz was born in Guam but moved to California when he was 11. He grew up in Southern California and graduated from Claremont Men’s College a.k.a Claremont McKenna College in 1972 with a double major in political science and economics.

He always knew he would attend law school. “I have wanted to be a lawyer since I was a little boy. I used to skip piano lessons to run across the street to watch the court and the legislature in session. One day I was hit and then run over by a car as I darted across the street.”

At Santa Clara Law, Cruz was a regular at the tennis court, a spirited prankster (having streaked a class on the last day of school wearing only platform shoes—this was the ’70s!), and an out-of-the closet gay man. His joie de vivre did not, however, prevent him from absorbing the teachings of Santa Clara: he graduated in 1975 with a strong sense of community and a belief that he needed to engage in community service—a belief he developed from his experience at the Community Law Center.

He returned to Guam after graduation specifically thinking he’d spend a year performing community service and then return to the Bay Area. But even before his bar results were out, he was asked by Guam’s governor to serve as his legal counsel. He has lived on Guam ever since.

Being honest about his sexuality has not been easy career-wise. Cruz believes it cost him three attempts for a seat on the island’s senate. “I’ve had to work hard to prove that I have a brain as well as a swoosh,” says Cruz, who has been with his partner, Johnny Applegate, for 19 years.

From 1982 to 1984, Cruz worked to establish a supreme court in Guam as director of the Washington Liaison Office of the Governor of Guam. The Guam legislature had established a supreme court but the 9th Circuit had struck it down. Cruz succeeded in convincing the U.S. Congress to permit the Guam legislature to establish a high court.

Upon his return to Guam, Cruz was appointed a judge in Guam’s trial court, where he served 10 years assigned to Juvenile Court, an assignment most judges take on for only a year. “The kids and I really had a good rapport,” says Cruz. “A lot of the kids just needed an adult in their lives who cared.”

In 1997, Governor Carl C.T. Gutierrez appointed Cruz to Guam’s new supreme court. After ten years as a judge, his homosexuality was not an issue. He was unanimously confirmed by the six senators present at his confirmation hearing. More than 90 people gave testimony in support of him, and no one spoke in opposition to his nomination. Two years later, his colleagues on the bench elected him chief justice.

Now, Cruz has joined Gutierrez in his bid to be governor, with Cruz running for lieutenant governor.

If he wins, he may be the first governor or lieutenant governor in the U.S. and its territories to be openly gay. “Governors have been open about being gay when they depart from office,” says Cruz, referring to New Jersey’s governor’s recent tearful departure from office, “but not when they go in.”

ELIZABETH BARRETT-ANDERSON ’79

Elizabeth Barrett-Anderson ’79 feels extremely lucky to have graduated from Santa Clara Law. Admitted after a minority student group put in a word on her behalf, Barrett-Anderson, who had a degree in political science from the University of San Francisco, worked hard to succeed—not only to fulfill her own dream, but also that of her mother.

“I am speechless at the commitment of SCU to Guam,” she says. “I hope the university administration sees how it has impacted our legal and island community by producing leader after leader, and I hope they are proud of this tradition.”

—ELIZABETH BARRETT-ANDERSON ’79

At age 26, Barrett-Anderson’s mother, Concepcion Cruz, was “poster gorgeous,” well educated, and a teacher. One day in 1939, a U.S. Army ship heading to the Philippines stopped on Guam. “In those days,” says Barrett-Anderson, “the way for a GI to meet an island girl was to ask for her autograph. Dad asked. They married in 1940 and shortly thereafter my Dad was restationed to the Presidio in San Francisco.” In 1960, while she was raising three children in San Francisco and Jack was working in the Phillipines, Concepcion enrolled in law school at Hastings. She was one of only two women in her class and the only female minority. Leaving after two years because of the strain on her family, she eventually obtained her master’s degree in political science from the University of Ateneo de Manila, a Jesuit university. She became Guam’s first female senator and a “founding mother” of Guam’s Republican Party.

Barrett-Anderson returned to Guam after graduating from Santa Clara Law. She served as counsel for Guam’s board of education before entering private practice. She was appointed the island’s first female attorney general in 1987, a time when there was only one other female attorney general in the U.S. In 1994 she was elected to the legislature, where she served two terms. In 1997, she became a judge on Guam’s superior court.

Barrett-Anderson, mother of three grown children, credits the trailblazing of herself and her mother to their Chamorro heritage. “There was no way that the Spanish could kill off the matriarchy of the Chamorro,” she says. “Women have been able to rise quickly in this community and government because people tend to trust women.” Family support is also important. “My mother was very proud of me that I chose the law,” says Barrett-Anderson. “It became her fulfillment.” Barrett-Anderson’s husband, Daniel Anderson, has been her biggest supporter in her career. “It takes a strong Chamorro man to deal with a strong Chamorro woman,” she says.

Guam’s government is only just over 50 years old. It has had a Supreme Court for less than a decade. And it still has no constitution—a dream that Barrett-Anderson hopes to help make a reality. As she and other SCU alumni work toward this and other dreams they have for Guam, she wonders if Santa Clara Law knows to what extent it has helped shape the territory.

“I am speechless at the commitment of SCU to Guam,” she says. “I hope the university administration sees how it has impacted our legal and island community by producing leader after leader, and I hope they are proud of this tradition. No one stood at their doorstop and asked SCU to make this commitment. But they did. I am so proud to be among the progeny of SCU. It seems to be in God’s plan that the relationship between SCU and Guam carry on for decades ahead.”